Prehistory Day at the Blackwater Draw NHL

Prehistory Day was successful, due to an excellent turnout, helpful volunteers, and great weather.  A special thanks goes out to the members of Mu Alpha Nu and their friends for helping out again this year.  Nearly 300 people turned out for the event which lasted all day with people trickling in until we closed at 5:00.

Chuck Hannaford discusses prehistoric tools and lifeways with interested visitors.

Mary Weahkee demonstrates traditional yucca fiber working.

Demonstrations included fiber working, sandal making, flintknapping, and hunting techniques used by ancestral New Mexicans.  Discussions ranged from general archaeology to gourd canteens, stone tools, and prehistoric containers.

Tommy Heflin teaches flintknapping to people of all ages and abilities.

The Portales flintknapping group, headed by Tommy Heflin, were a popular station at the event, helping create a new generation of flintknappers.

Everyone is attracted to the spear throwing range.  Isaiah Coan from the Office of Archaeological Studies was a great help with the kids.

The “touch-and-feel” tables create many opportunities for learning about the past and what it means to be human.

From the abstract concept of “containers” as an artifact, a local boy learns about prehistoric life.

Stacey Bennett shows her poster display created for the event.

We hope to keep the public outreach events a regular occurrence at Blackwater Draw.  Keep your eyes on the blog for future activities.

Kids of all ages can get in touch with the past at these events.  Hope to see you here next year.

Bone Tools from the Broken Mammoth Site

Annalisa is a blogging archaeologist and artist living in Alaska.  This is a reblog of her SAA poster from this year.  Check out her Tumblr which contains many good archaeology bits as well as other interests from her life.

Survival New Mexico!

Mark your calendars for the Survival: New Mexico weekend at El Rancho de las Golondrinas near Santa Fe August 24th and 25th, 2013.

go to golondrinas.org to find out more.

Wicker Mammoth Burning

A fun, and remarkably good-looking, mammoth sculpture in Bluff, Utah.  Set to burn on the solstice to honor the mammoth petroglyphs found nearby.  I love Bluff and wish I could get up there for the event.

2012 Atlatl Competition

Mark your calendar…. October 27th

Join us for the 12th Annual Blackwater Draw Atlatl Competition

Check back soon for more details and the official poster.

More Fine Photography

This is the raw photo.  It will undergo some cleanup via PhotoShop and we hope will become a postcard.

Bronze Age Technology

The recovered portion of the Dover Boat on display.

Robin Wood is a remarkable traditional craftsman from Britain.  He has recently been involved with replicating the Dover Boat, a Bronze Age ship discovered in 1992 (see the news article here).  The find is about 3500 years old, placing it right at the cusp of early metal-working technology.

The Oetzi axe

The reconstruction is half-scale but staying true to the technology, they are attempting to use replicated tools for much of the construction.  Pallstaves were cast from an original and hafted both like an adze and like an axe.  This isn’t speculative as there are quite a number of preserved Bronze Age examples from wet contexts in Europe.

“Pallstave” replicas.

As with other ships and boats from the Neolithic and Bronze Age, ingenious methods were used to connect the planks and stiffen the hull.  Technologically, these fall somewhere between composite dugouts and true framed ships.  There are many factors in holding together a boat including lots of movement from all angles, swelling/shrinking of the planks, and the need for light weight.  The solution on the Dover Boat was to stitch the entire thing together with yew “withes” and stiffen the body with heavy lathes driven through carved mortices.

It seems that a better candidate could not have been chosen to work on this project and I’m very glad to see that he is documenting it on his blog for all to see.

Adzing a plank by eye, leaving the mortices standing to accept the lathes. (Click the photo or link below to go to Robin’s website).

“Experiential Archaeology” in action.

Clovis Points

Clovis points from the Clovis site.  These likely all date to a few centuries around 11,000 RCYBP and most were found in association with Mammuthus columbi and a few with Bison antiquus.  The Clovis site contained at least 28 mammoths that died or were killed around the pond margin and there is good evidence that six or more were killed by humans.

Points from Clovis strata at the Clovis type-site

As can be seen in this image, the raw materials were variable but high quality.  Also notable are the small size of the points.  Non-hunters often mistakenly think that a small point is for small prey but quite the opposite may be true.  Until recently, small arrow points were used in Africa to bring down elephants, buffalo, and other large game.  The object is to pierce a vital organ or artery and a wider blade needs more force to cut through hide to reach the protected organs.  There was probably much more thought to the animal’s behavior and the situation of the kill and it may be no coincidence that all of the known mammoth and bison kills at the site are within the muddy pond margin.

The majority of raw materials are Edwards Plateau Chert or Alibates Agate from the Canadian River in Texas.  Other materials include quartzite, likely procured in the upper reaches of the Canadian, Tecovas jasper from north Texas, silicified wood, and obsidian.

More to come…

Artifact of the week 11/9/2011

Folsom ultrathin biface from the Clovis site North Bank.

Ultrathin bifaces are a recently recognized element distinctive to the Folsom toolkit.  Ultrathin bifaces are found at many Folsom sites including those in North Dakota, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas.  Ultrathin bifacial manufacturing technology appears consistent between numerous sites recognized by distinctive, opposed diving bifacial thinning flakes (Root et al. 1994).

Morphologically, the Folsom ultrathin biface is broad in width, has finely retouched excurvate margins, and is extremely thin (Boldurian 1999:111).  Functionally, its use is generally interpreted as a non-hafted knife or cutting implement used for butchering and processing game.  Pegi Jodry (1998) has suggested that ultrathin bifaces were used and maintained by women for specialized butchering required for drying strips of meat.

Comments welcome.

Boldurian, Anthony T.  1999  Clovis Revisited:New Perspectives on Paleoindian Adaptations from Blackwater Draw, New Mexico.  University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia.

Jodry, Margaret A.  1998  The Possible Design of Folsom Ultrathin Bifaces as Fillet Knives for Jerky Production.  Current Research in the Pleistocene 15:75-77.

Root, Matthew J., J. D. William, Marvin Kay, and L. K. Shifrin  1999  Folsom Ultrathin Biface and Radial Break Tools in the Knife River Flint Quarry Area.  In Folsom Lithic Technology: Explorations in Structure and Variation, edited by D. S. Amick, International Monographs in Prehistory, Archaeological Series, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Blackwater Draw Fall Atlatl Competition 2011

Join us at the Blackwater Draw site for the

11th Annual Fall Atlatl Competition.

Whether you are new to dart throwing or have been at it for years, everyone is invited to participate in the 2011 Atlatl Throw.  Learn more from the World Atlatl Association.

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• The event will be held October 22nd at the Blackwater Draw Archaeological site on New Mexico Highway 467.
• Gates open and registration to compete begins at 9:00 am.
• Practice targets open at 9:00.
• Throwing teams for men, women, and youth.
• Field round competition beginning around 10:00 am and will continue through the afternoon.
• ISAC in the afternoon.
• Casual throwing available all day as targets become free.

Atlatl and spearthrowers of all types welcome.  (No stone tips please).

2010 Competition

2009 Competition

2008 Competition